InsaneJournal

Who: Dahak and Katara
What: An unlucky meeting for her but a lucky one for him…
Where: The Garden
When: Day 13; Late Afternoon
Rating: PG to PG-13
Status: Complete

Katara woke up feeling fairly good about things. The last couple of days had been successfully productive, and she wanted to keep that up. Having nothing to do with her time left her feeling depressed, and she didn’t like when pessimistic thoughts plagued her mind. She wanted to continue looking on the bright side of things, no matter how bad they got.

With that desire in mind, she had prepared herself for the day, wearing her traditional clothing and hair style. A light breakfast was her food intake for the time being before she headed straight for the training room. A dummy awaited her there, but she wasn’t surprised. Katara had had it in her mind since she awakened that she would practice the compiled learning of the staff from Xena and Gabrielle so she could be better when she met with them again.

For two hours she practiced various forms in defense and offense. The dummy held firm against her blows, obviously not some cheap piece of equipment, but, if it had been a real person, it would have been in quite the state of disarray. Eventually, Katara realized she needed someone to work with on these, too. Working alone was quite a work-out, but she couldn’t improve past the points where she’d already done well. A few moments later the door opened, and a clay golem entered the training room. She’d seen how graceful they were for their material. They moved like humans, except it was obvious they had no spirit to them.

Katara trained with the golem, giving it simple commands such as which rounds it should be blocking and which it should be attacking. There were other rounds when it was supposed to be a combined effort of both. The Planet had a pretty good judgment where the level of difficulty was concerned. Of course this place could read her mind, but that didn’t mean it didn’t make the golems go easy on her. After a few hours, the waterbender was sweating, but she felt as if she’d made more progress with her training, even if just a little. She’d effectively turned her defense into an offensive move and hit the golem’s calf. Incorporating her waterbending disciplines effectively into staff training was important to her because it was familiar, and she was good at bending.

She needed food then fresh air. The training had been hard and productive, but she was sweating, and she‘d been going at it for hours. It was time for a break, time to cool down, time to get something else in her stomach to replace what she had worked off. Replacing the staff on the rack on which she found it, Katara nodded to golem politely in thanks before vacating the room to make her way to the kitchen.

The first thing she found was cool water to drink. It soothed her aching to some extent, but it wasn’t a bad ache. It made her feel good. She could just go down to the ocean to heal it again, but she wanted it there, at least for a little while. Once she’d eaten a good lunch, she traveled outside and to the garden to relax a bit.

Katara walked among the flowers, smiling a bit at the aesthetic beauty of the place. Even if the Planet was a horrible prison warden who kidnapped people from lives they might not have wanted to leave, it did have good sense when it came to displaying appealing sights. Soon she found an intricately carved stone bench, so the waterbender planted herself upon it to enjoy the air. It was hotter than anticipated, but the young woman didn't really mind.